


And comes safe home

by middlemarch



Series: Plum dimension [13]
Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, American Civil War, Angst, Backstory, F/M, Slow Romance, Tumblr Prompt, Widowed, commandeered farmhouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 05:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16341008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: From Tumblr:  Confederate Field surgeon Jedediah Foster and Yankee widow Mary Phinney and a commandeered farm house.A request, an answer. Plum sitting on Mary's rocker. A garden full of boneset and angelica.





	And comes safe home

“Madam—”

“Don’t you ‘madam,’ me! I won’t have it, I tell you,” Mary exclaimed. “I’m Mrs. von Olnhausen, not ‘madam,’ and I won’t have you quartering your men here!”

“I’m very much afraid you misunderstand me, Mrs. von Olhausen,” the Confederate officer replied, polite and unpleasantly unperturbed by her outcry. He was tall, his uniform neat if soiled at the cuffs, the buttons in need of a polish. “I wasn’t asking your permission. I was informing you of my intentions.”

“How dare you?”

“I have twenty men to keep alive, a full half of them injured, and a seventeen year old flag-bearer about to expire if I can’t operate in the next quarter-hour. Your fit of pique is irrelevant—my duty is to my men.”

Mary paused. She’d sent off Samuel with the other freedman a good two weeks ago, up North where they might settle safely or at least escape being taken by the encroaching Rebel army. Samuel had pleaded with her to leave the farmhouse behind but she’d looked at the wide front porch where the rockers sat beside the front door, painted a rich dark green to remind her of the New Hampshire pine forests, and the fields of barley and corn, the kitchen garden filled with herbs, berry bushes, the feathery tops of carrots, and shaken her head. In the parlor, the furniture was worn but fine, the painting over the mantle a landscape that had reminded her husband of his home, the rag rug sewed together from the cuttings of every dress she’d had since she was fourteen. She knew Aurelia wouldn’t go if there was any chance her boy would come to her and she knew her home was the only safe spot along the Underground Railroad for miles. She didn’t regret, couldn’t regret staying, but it seemed she wouldn’t be alone as she’d expected.

“There isn’t room for twenty men, Captain,” she said.

“Captain Foster,” he interjected. He was brash without being young, his dark beard sprinkled with grey, silvering at the temples, but he was keeping an appropriate distance and had not frankly ogled her, though her lace collar was unbuttoned and her hair was falling around her face loosened from the low bun at the nape of her neck.

“There isn’t room here for twenty men, Captain Foster,” she repeated evenly. “This is a modest farmhouse, not a plantation. And I’ve only provisions for myself and one servant, not enough to feed your men, even if I should want to.”

“I gather that means you don’t want to—how intriguing! No pretense at devotion to the glorious Cause,” Foster said.

“I’ve seen enough of dying,” Mary said. It wouldn’t do to announce her loyalties, to argue with the senior officer of a Confederate unit.

“Apparently, you’re in the minority in our nation, though I cannot disagree with you. I didn’t train as a surgeon for this monstrous waste,” Foster replied, watching her steadily. “The men who are well enough can pitch their tents in the field. I shouldn’t think we’d be more than six or seven in the house.”

“That few?” Mary said, unable to keep the edge from her voice.

“We happy few…to have a roof over our head. And your kitchen table to operate on,” Foster said. He sounded tired suddenly, as if he’d exhausted himself in a battle, instead of ordering a widowed Yankee woman to turn over her home to soldiers, some of whom had a good chance of dying and haunting the place.

“Come along, then. As you’re going to have your way, you might as well hurry and save that boy,” Mary said.

“Do you faint at the sight of blood, Mrs. von Olnhausen?” Captain Foster asked without preamble. Mary thought of the runaway slaves she’d tended and her husband’s last painful illness, the miscarriages she’d suffered through and Aurelia’s baby, delivered too soon, almost costing the woman her life. She knew the scent of blood and all the colors it took, how black it became in shadow, at night, at dawn. In dreams. How it tasted when she bit her lip, the metallic tang a reminder of how she was bound to life.

“No,” she said.

“Then perhaps you will assist me. I had to send the orderly on with the other officer and the rest of the men. The boy will stand a better chance if I’m able to use both my hands.”

“Shall you force me?” Mary said.

“I don’t see how I could. Even if I should want to,” Foster replied. “But—there are two maple rockers by your door and a well-fed calico is sitting in one of them. And your garden is filled with feverfew and boneset, tansy and angelica. And unless I miss my guess, you’ve turned that dress twice already. You have the inclination and the skill to assist in saving a man’s life. And, I suspect, the compassion to consider the mother waiting at home for him.”

“You’d best bring him in. The boy you mean to save,” Mary said. The table was already scrubbed and bare. She’d deal with where Foster and his men were to sleep after they’d seen to the boy. 

“Williams! Bring young James! It seems he’s a chance at remaining among the living,” Foster shouted, following Mary in. He was closer than she’d expected, crowding her a little. She had the sense this would not change, not in all the days and weeks to follow; she could not understand why it didn’t trouble her, why his dark gaze upon her was the sunlight she’d missed these many months. She wondered if she would sit in her rocking chair tonight, looking at the moon coming up, and who it might be beside her.

**Author's Note:**

> This was dashed off as a response to a request on Tumblr. Plum has made an appearance because why not. Jed quotes the St. Crispin's Day speech so I used that for the title too.


End file.
